A few seconds after the blue-flamed bead erupted from Mike's residence, the atmosphere itself bent beneath its sudden presence. The blue flame drifted skyward, serene and measured, its radiance spreading in calm pulses as it expanded outward from Mike's home. Where it passed, the frigid air halted—as though time itself had been caught in suspension. Frost that had been radiating from this home was reflected inwards. The bitter chill reflected back to Mike, not burned away, but pushed back—disciplined, ordered. This was no common fire. It was deliberate. Contained. Alive.
The blue flame did not attack—it defended.
It sealed Mike's house in a protective embrace, shielding it from the chaos that was unfolding in the heart of the village and also shielding the village from the chaos of Mikes making. Because just moments after the blue flame was born, something darker awakened.
The orange flame.
It had lingered for hours, growing slowly, insidiously, like a wound ignored. But now, freed from its restraint, it twisted and deepened. Its warm hue blackened into a molten maroon, and from that maroon—a shadow was born.
The flame swelled grotesquely, its mass growing until it hovered like a sun eclipsed, a dark, throbbing orb of flame suspended above the village center. It pulsed violently, a thing alive not with spirit, but with rage. It had not come to protect. It had come to consume.
Then it erupted.
A column of dark fire burst into the heavens, the sky itself warping in its heat. The air screamed as the inferno spiraled out of control, thrashing and clawing at the world around it. It didn't just burn—it hungered. As though the very flame remembered being caged, suppressed by the blue flame earlier, and now lashed out with primal fury. It sought vengeance. It sought dominance. It sought to make the world feel what it had been denied.
Snow turned to steam in an instant. Ice cracked and melted, seeping into the ground as clouds of mist engulfed the village. The rampaging flame was not simply burning—it was devouring.
And then, something strange happened.
The cold—the endless biting cold that had gripped the village in unnatural death—began to vanish. But it wasn't being pushed back like at Mike's home. No. Here, the cold was being pulled in. The rampaging flame absorbed it, inhaled it like a dying god taking back its breath. Tendrils of icy mist curled into the flame, disappearing into its heart. With every breath it took, the air warmed—not from kindness, but from conquest.
And then the dead began to stir.
At first, it was small things. A bird, frozen stiff on a windowsill, twitched. A mouse buried in snow twitched and scurried. Then came the larger beasts. Dogs and goats and cats, their stiff limbs softening, their eyes blinking open as warmth returned to lifeless bodies.
And then—the people.
Inside homes across the village, the sick groaned as pain left their limbs. Wounds faded. Breath returned to lungs that had stopped drawing air. Old men opened their eyes, tears mixing with laughter. Children sat up in bed, blinking against the sudden warmth in their cheeks.
Even afflictions—the invisible shackles of disease, madness, and inherited curses—shivered and broke. As if some ancient authority had called them forth, ordered them to leave, and they had obeyed.
The villagers didn't understand what was happening. But they felt it.
Hope.
The flame—chaotic as it was—was reversing the damage.
Yet it was far from benevolent.
The fire trembled violently, still half-feral. It didn't care about saving lives. It cared only about feeding. The reversal of death was not mercy—it was a byproduct of power. The flame didn't distinguish between the noble and the cruel, the young or the old. It simply absorbed what was broken and returned it, reforged by its chaos.
And still, it grew.
From the center of the maroon flame came a darker light. Black, but not void—dense. Rich with energy. The center of the flame no longer looked like fire, but like a solid orb of condensed night. It looked like Grace—but not any known to mortal record.
Many would have mistaken it for the Grace of Depravity, that cruel force known for bending men into monsters. But this... this was different.
This was Yin Grace.
Where Depravity was grotesque, Yin was silent. Where Depravity screamed, Yin whispered. It radiated calm and terror in equal measure, not by force, but by presence alone. Even in its chaos, the rampaging flame had stumbled upon the edges of something sacred—or cursed.
It was absorbing death, curse, and decay—and purifying them into itself.
And yet—something held it back.
Despite its fury, the flame remained contained within its invisible prison. A barrier. Thin and translucent like a soap bubble, but etched with runes that flickered in and out of existence. A masterpiece of containment.
And beneath it, sat the architect.
Gab.
His body was slumped in meditation, knees folded beneath him, his hands locked in a precise mudra. But his face was a canvas of agony. Blood streamed from his nose, his ears, his eyes. His robes were stained red, and his chest rose and fell in shallow, uneven breaths. Small pools of blood had formed around him, silent witnesses to the cost of his control.
But his expression…
It was one of peace.
A smile, faint but genuine, played at the corners of his lips.
He was succeeding.
Years—decades—of suppression, of secrets, of self-imposed ignorance—had finally ended. His mental seals, ancient locks forged by him and others long dead, had come undone. The knowledge returned not in pieces, but in floods.
He remembered everything.
The maps of forgotten realms. The structures of divine hierarchy. The secrets of Grace. Even the pain of past choices—the betrayal, the war, the cost of power. It was all there, alive in his mind.
But the body is not so forgiving.
Gab trembled, his skin cracking like dry earth. From within, bright blue light shone through—Grace unbound. His mortal shell simply couldn't contain what had been locked away for so long. The power of his mind alone was enough to annihilate him.
And still, he endured.
Gab's soul blazed, leaping past boundaries. He wasn't just a man remembering power—he was ascending.
From Soul to Ascended Soul.
From Spirit to Ascended Spirit.
Past Blessed. Past Seraph.
He leapt directly to Angel, and then hovered—just shy of Archangel. A leap of five divine ranks. A feat so rare that only myths dared speak of it.
And even that was not enough to house the totality of his mind's Grace. He really needed to unseal his body.
What kind of being had he been, unsealed and whole?
Gab exhaled. One by one, the mind-seals activated—but this time not against his will. Now he held the keys. He could open and close them as needed. He was no longer a prisoner of himself.
He opened his eyes.
They glowed—deep crimson, like the embers of a sun not meant for this world. Above him, the rampaging flame paused. Then, it descended. Slowly. Purposefully. It hovered above its original place, returning to where it had first been born.
But it was changed.
No longer just a flame. It was heavier. Larger. More aware. It pulsed like a heartbeat, steady and slow, its Yin core pulsing in quiet defiance. Its presence radiated awe and dread.
The blue flame, still surrounding Mike's home, flickered gently—calm as ever. It continued to hold the cold inwards, untouched by the chaos just beyond its reach.
The villagers could only watch from their windows and rooftops, breath held, hearts pounding. Some wept. Some knelt. Others simply stared, too overwhelmed to act.
Gab sat in silence.
The blood stopped.
His body began to knit itself together. Wrinkles smoothed. His caramel skin lightened to a soft gold. His body shrank—muscles melted away, replaced with a slender, almost delicate frame. He looked like a teenager now—unassuming, easy to overlook.
But his eyes…
Those eyes held centuries. Hunger. Curiosity. Fire.
They scanned the world with the intensity of a scholar desperate to understand the universe in its entirety. Everything was worth studying. Everything was worth knowing.
Then, slowly, the hunger faded. The storm inside calmed.
Gab smiled again.
And he spoke—just one sentence.
"Favored by heavens, indeed."
His voice was a whisper, yet it rang out like a bell across the village.
His gaze drifted to the dark flame, still inhaling Yin energy through the fragile membrane. With a gesture of his hand, a second barrier formed—thicker, lined with more refined glyphs of celestial law.
The process halted.
The flame obeyed.
Gab nodded, satisfied. And then—he vanished.
Not with a flash. Not with thunder. He simply ceased to be, like a thought forgotten, a dream dissolving in the light of dawn.
The skies calmed. The earth exhaled. And the world, now touched by two flames—one of chaos, one of life—was never the same again.